At this point in the book, author Jeff Sengstack has already explained some basic video editing techniques. In this lesson he moves into more advanced concepts. Even if you haven't purchased the latest update to Premiere, not to worry. These techniques apply to just about any version.

InformIT presents four chapters from "Sams Teach Yourself Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours." This book is different from the rest of the dozen or so other Premiere how-to books. Those books tend to be highly detailed or greatly simplified reference manuals using impenetrable vernacular — or — collections of step-by-step instructions focusing solely on Premiere functions. Both types fail to create lasting impressions, and neither teaches you how to make videos.

What's missing is context. I think of those books as sort of like instructing budding artists how use a paintbrush by telling them to swab the brush in paint and slather it on a canvas. Where's the art?

My goal with "Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours" is to help you create high high-quality, professional-looking videos. Rather than simply presenting a collection of disconnected tutorials, I will frequently remind you of the big picture and what you're trying to accomplish. That said, I haven't skimped on useful nuts-and and-bolts instructions. I've tried simply to present them in a logical, easy-to-follow manner that reflects the way most Premiere users approach editing.

This latest version of Premiere has some exciting new tools: high-end text-creator, professional audio sweetening, a powerful and fast MPEG encoder, and DVD authoring. I cover all these new features in depth in "Sams Teach Yourself Premiere 6.5 in 24 Hours." For InformIT readers I've selected four chapters that I think give new and experienced users of Premiere some helpful advice.

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

I believe that only after you learn the fundamentals should you start specializing.
If all a basketball player practices is a spinning, reverse, wrong-handed flip
shot, he'll make no more than a bucket a game. Not many opportunities for
that shot arise.

By now, given enough practice, you may have mastered straightforward Premieretechniques, such as cuts-only editing (including matching edits, wide/tight
shots, and avoiding jump cuts) as well as standard transitions, with all their
options, and straight-up audio editing and text creation.

That being the case, this hour will ramp up those fundamental techniques a
bit. I'll show you some other ways to manipulate clips, go over some standard
professional editing techniques, explain some higher-end transitions, present
an automated means to add music, and show you how to make a quick music video.

The highlights of this hour include the following:

Playing clips backward, adjusting their speed, and creating still frames

Rolling, slip, and slide edits

Using special transitions, including masks and QuickTime, and stringing
together multiple transitions

Adding music to your projects

Setting timeline markers and making an automated music video

Playing Clips Backward, Changing Speed, and Freezing Frames

By the time you finish this section you'll know how to create a video
sequence that incorporates all three of these concepts.

Playing Clips Backwards

First, a fun and simple techniqueplaying a clip backwards. Consider the
possibilities. Kids diving "out" of a pond, a pitcher
"retrieving" his fastball, and a reverse replay of an explosive
building demolition.

Task: Play a Clip Backwards

To play a clip backwards, follow these steps:

Select any clip, either on the timeline or in the Project
window.

Right-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac) to open the clip menu. Select
Speed and change the New Rate percentage to 100 (negative 100) in
the Clip Speed dialog box (see Figure
9.1). Click OK.

Play the clip either by dragging it from the Project window to the Source
Monitor screen or by playing it from the timeline.

If you have audio associated with the clip, it'll play backward too. You
can unlink that audio and change it back to +100 or unlink it before making the
reversal.

Notice a couple things. If you changed the clip in the timeline, it'll
have an altered slugthe name listed on the timelinewith x-100%
at the end. I've highlighted that "tag" in Figure
9.2. If you changed the clip in the Project window, it does not display
that extra bit of information in its slug, and there's no way to know whether
the clip will run backward unless you play it or drag it to the timeline and
note the x-100% tag.

Figure 9.1 The Clip Speed dialog
box, where a setting of -100% plays the video backward and 200% doubles the
speed and cuts the clip time in half.

Figure 9.2 Giving a clip a new speed
adds an x-% tag to its timeline "slug."

TIP

It's easy to change clip names or copy clips and give them new names
within the Project window. To give a clip a new namesuch as Kids Dive
- reverse 100slowly double-click the clip name and type in a new one.
A better solution is to create a whole new clip. To do that, right/Option-click
the clip you want to duplicate and select Copy. Then right/Option-click in the
white area in the lower-right side of the Project window and select Paste. There
is your duplicate clip. You can change its speed/direction and rename it to
reflect that. Those changes will not affect the original clip on your scratch
disk.

Changing Speed

Using the same right/Option-click Speed menu, you can speed up or slow down a
clip. Simply change the percentage: 200% will double the speed while cutting the
clip time in half, and 50% will slow things down by half and double the clip
time. If there's a top percentage limit to speeding up clips, I
haven't found it. Try a setting of 1,000% just to see how that looks. The
bottom limit is 1%. Try that and notice that your clip is now 100 times longer!
View it and you'll see that it's just a collection of still frames
that change every few seconds.

Once again, your clip timeline slug will reflect whatever speed change you
make by adding an x-% tag at the end.

Task: Play a Clip at Different Speeds

It's a simple matter to take a clip at regular speed and change its
speed midway. Here's how:

Select a clip and drag it to the timeline. Use the edit line to find a
place within the clip where you want to shift speed.

Select the Razor tool from the toolbox. As a reminder, I've highlighted
it in Figure 9.3.

Move it to the edit line and click to slice your clip in two.

Press the V hotkey to switch the cursor to the Selection tool (or click
its icon in the toolbox) and then right/Option-click the clip segment whose
speed you want to change.

Select Speed and change the percentage. Note the new x-% tag on
that segment.

Play those two segments back to back to see how this works.

TIP

If you change the speed of the clip such that it plays slower (that is, in
slow motion), you can improve the quality of the motion by turning on Clip,
VideoOptions, FrameHold, FrameBlending. This feature will smooth out the
motion.

Adding Freeze Frames

If you want to create a sequence that starts with a regular-speed clip, slows
down, stops, shifts to a slow reverse, and finishes at full-speed reverse, then
you need to create a freeze frame.

You also can use a freeze frame as an effective way to close a segment or an
entire production. Freeze the final frame and then fade to black.

To do either you first need to create a freeze frame. If you want to create a
sequence, drag a clip to the timeline with the frame in it that you want to
freeze. Otherwise, any clip will do, just so you can see how this works.

Task: Create a Freeze Frame

To create a freeze frame, follow these steps:

Use the Selection tool to drag the end of the clip to the frame you want
to freeze. For instance, if the clip is of kids diving into a pond, you may want
that point to be just as their bodies are about halfway into the water.

Right/Option-click on your clip and select Copy. Click the timeline after
that clip and then right/Option-click and select Paste. You have now added a
duplicate of the clip to the timeline. You will turn this duplicate clip into
the freeze frame clip.

The Frame Hold Options dialog box contains several options. In this case,
as I've highlighted in Figure 9.4,
you want to check the Hold On box and select one of its three options: In
Point, Marker 0, or Out Point. In this case, choose Out Point (I'll
cover markers later in this hour).

This creates a clip that consists of only one frame that holds for the
length of the original clip. You can play it or drag the edit line through it to
confirm this. Note that the timeline slug does not change to reflect this
clip's new freeze frame status.

Give it a new name by right/Option-clicking, selecting Set Clip Name
Alias, and typing in something descriptive, such as Freeze - Kids
Dive.

Figure 9.4 The Frame Hold Options
dialog box. Use it to create a freeze frame.

CAUTION

I had you give this clip an "alias" because of an unpredictable
characteristic of Premiere. I'm not sure whether it's a bug or
a feature, but when you create a freeze frame and then add a transition to it,
the freeze frame sometimes changes to another frame within the original video
clip. Apparently, a way to avoid that is to give the freeze frame a new
name.

You now can use that clip in a sequence: forward regular speed, slow motion,
freeze frame, reverse slow, and reverse regular speed. I suggest doing that in
the exercise segment at the end of the hour.

Task: Add a Freeze Frame and Fade to Black to End a Piece

To add a freeze frame and fade to black at the end of a piece, follow these
steps:

Create "black video" by right/Option-clicking in the white area
of the Project window below your clips and selecting New, Black Video. Alternatively,
you can click the little icon highlighted in Figure
9.5 to open the Create window and select Black Video from the drop-down
list. Either method adds a black video clip to the Project window.

Drag the black video clip to the end of your piece after the freeze
frame.

Open the Transitions palette and drag and drop the cross-dissolve at the
edit point between the freeze frame clip and the black video.

To view the dissolve, use Alt-scrub (Windows) or Option-scrub (Mac), use
the Real-time Preview feature, or render the dissolve.

Figure 9.5 The Create Item icon in
the Project window lets you place a black video clip in the Project window.

TIP

Using the Create Item window or Project window's right/Option-click menu
and then selecting New lets you add other types of clips to your Project
window:

Universal Counting Leader is that black-and-white spinning countdown you
used to see in movies.

Bars and Tone lets engineers adjust their playback devices to the right
audio and video levels for their projects (not as important a feature as it was
before automated systems).

Color Matte lets you create a full-screen, solid-color clip for use as a
background.

This is another way to access the Title Designer and to create an
"offline file" (see the next note).

NOTE

An offline file is sort of a placeholder for a video clip you intend
to transfer to your hard drive later. You can edit that placeholder clip on your
timeline, and when you finally do capture the clip to your hard drive, you can
replace the offline clip with the actual clip. To do that, highlight the offline
clip, select Project, Replace Clips, locate the newly captured clip, and click
OK.